This kind of transparency is unheard of with other MMOs, especially regarding exploits. While it's still shameful that such a huge bug could go under the radar for so long, it's also good to know that as EvE has grown and matured, CCP has taken steps already to ensure it (probably) won't happen again.

EvE being what it is, anything that can give a person/corp/alliance a leg up will be abused shamelessly, to the point it breaks the game if said mechanic is.. shall we say... unintentional?

Posted - 2009.02.11 11:40:00 -
[154]
So, when can we expect to read the academic journal paper from CCP Dr.EyjoG?

"the effects of a limitless supply of goods acquired through exploit on the market in a virtual environment"

The closeset real life example to this that I can recall off the top of my head is what's happened to cause the imminent depression. Banks loan money they create out of thin air and eventually get hauled up for it.

Originally by:Rata NrnimaHow many CCP employees / Developers / Game Msters were involved in this exploit? Entirely too much real life money exchanged hands in this. CCP lost too much money to have turned a blind eye for as long as they did for collusion not to be involved.

Your argument fails by the fact that if devs/gm's were involved, they could just spam the isk out of thin air. No need to sell stuff on the market or any of that jazz.

Originally by:Rata NrnimaThe report is a nicely written explanation that says a bunch of nothing. They say they blew up a bunch of pos' etc. but no one saw. Sure you did, and the economist didn't notice . . .

Have some more tinfoil, [snip] CCP's follows their words and can/will not enclose that information, but it doesnt prevent players mouthing it off in third party forums. Sure, it's not CCP's "official" word, but then again, you've shown you dont believe what they say no matter how they say it.

[snip]To me it's nice things got closure [snip]

CCP broke their word when this exploit was allowed to flourish for so very long. My tin-foil hat at least isn't down around the gonads - I've proven not to be so far up CCP's collective arse to form an opinion not recite by rout the company line.

CCP did as predicted: Published a load of crap so very close to new patch release and rely on a self admitted ineffectual group of players (CSM) to push acceptance. This is not closure it is avoidance.

Originally by:Rata NrnimaCCP broke their word when this exploit was allowed to flourish for so very long. My tin-foil hat at least isn't down around the gonads - I've proven not to be so far up CCP's collective arse to form an opinion not recite by rout the company line.

CCP did as predicted: Published a load of crap so very close to new patch release and rely on a self admitted ineffectual group of players (CSM) to push acceptance. This is not closure it is avoidance.

Until you can explain very clearly what you feel, other than names, has not been made public in this, you are just a troll.

Quote:From the technical part earlier in this blog, we basically can assume that the exploit has been possible from the beginning of player owned structures in EVE. After digging through terabytes of data we know that the exploit existed on a small scale until 2007. Until then, the cost of setting up POSes and operating them probably outweighed the benefit of large scale operations and hence these operations were able to stay under the radar.

Does this mean that other players were aware of and using this exploit even earlier than those who have already been banned and, if so, what action has been or is going to be taken against these accounts?

The report measures the effect of the exploit against the entire Eve economy. What was the effect of the exploit on the T2 market itself and what percentage of that market does the exploited ISK represent over the period in question?

Quote:From the technical part earlier in this blog, we basically can assume that the exploit has been possible from the beginning of player owned structures in EVE. After digging through terabytes of data we know that the exploit existed on a small scale until 2007. Until then, the cost of setting up POSes and operating them probably outweighed the benefit of large scale operations and hence these operations were able to stay under the radar.

Does this mean that other players were aware of and using this exploit even earlier than those who have already been banned and, if so, what action has been or is going to be taken against these accounts?

The report measures the effect of the exploit against the entire Eve economy. What was the effect of the exploit on the T2 market itself and what percentage of that market does the exploited ISK represent over the period in question?

Try reading the blog again. Then again if you still have difficulty understanding.

Originally by:Hugh Ruka2. Your programmers are a bunch of idiots that don't know how to test their code properly it seems.

Actually, stale cache corruption bugs are typically the work of good programmers; bad programmers aren't sophisticated enough to use caching and hinting techniques to optimize their code. And race conditions (which this effectively was) are notoriously difficult to debug.

And, HURRAY! for the destroyed T2 BPOs, it will make my inventor friends happy, they happen to invent stuff listed by people in there.

@all that think making bugless code is easy : Unless you work in something that could make you directly injure/kill people (this is aerospace, and all transport stuff) or loose large amounts of money (I just mean way more than the additional development cost), you really don't pay people to review the code, it just goes through QA that will test and hammer the program and that's all.I'm actually quite impressed that CCP takes steps to have a good hold on their code quality and try as much as possible to avoid new exploits by spending more money on it, everyone wouldn't.--Pocket drone carriers (tm) enthousiast !

Here, and here, I have put a red line showing that there is a clear ceiling in place for both the Ferrogel and Fermionics supply (the thick bright red line).

As such, can I ask CCP whether:1) alchemy was designed with too much restriction to additional supply as a result of this.2) I'm correct in the analysis that Dysp and Prom moons are all being used to maximum saturation (ie what is the maximum volume that can be sold from moons alone)3) CCP have any plans to either rebalance alchemy or provide more moons

Good points. I would speculate on your last point tho. It is possible that in W-Space one can find additional high end moons (in 10 th march expansion). As there is 2500 new systems, if mineral distribution in moos is following the same pattern then ... well the possibility is there. I know that I plan to find one in test server after I manage to scan down a hole that is not already collapsed and see what it would take to mine it ... The rats in there are murderous as I have heard. And logistiks involved might be nightmarish.

Our systems for detecting issues failed and this brought it to our attention that they are due for an overhaul. The way exploit petitions are received and handled is currently being restructured. The same is true for the bug reporting tools and work procedures in regards to how bug reports are handled.

The QA and Customer Support departments are working on these matters together and new updated systems and procedures will be implemented as soon as they become available. In some cases, the necessary changes have already been implemented.

About 2 months ago I created a petition about a possible exploit.

I wasnt sure if it was an exploit or not.It was a way of getting cheap stuff not free stuff.The response I got was that the issue needed to be moved to a different queue as it couldnt be investigated under a stuck petition , I'm sure I filed it under exploit but thats beside the point.

The petition I created was autoclosed by the system.So I am left now not knowing if the issue I described was an exploit or not, and have no idea if its under investigation or not :(

Would it be worth re-creating the exploit petition now to take advantage of your new improved procedures in case the issue has been forgotten like those 2005 petition u mentioned in the blog ?

Originally by:Rude Bwoynothing in there about wormholes or T3 ships :-(

Just because i like to burst bubbles..This blog had NOTHING what so ever to do about the new expansion pack, which is clearly stated.. You must have taken a seriously drunken turn when going into this post to type my friend :)

Originally by:DrachenlordAre you completely naive? PLENTY of people end up being punished for Crimes other people commit whether they had direct involvement or not, Terms like "Accessory after the fact" or "criminally Negligent" don't exist for no reason....

There is a big difference here. In rl you know people can do fraud with money and bookkeeping etc. If you do not put in right checking procedures you are (partially) responsible. But i do not know what is possible with the faulty code ccp produces. Its impossible for me to take a look at it. Its secret. So how do you expect me to put in security procedures if i am not allowed to know whats possible? And even if have the code, do you really expect me to hire a programmer so he can put me out as a non expert to tell me what is? Checks within reason ok, but this certainly is not.

Originally by:DrachenlordTo suggest otherwise is fallacy at best... I think you need to pull yer head out of the sand and take some lessons on how the real world works before trying to make direct comparisons to our little virtual world here.

That does not make it right. Convicting people for crimes they did not commit is always wrong. Laws or no laws.

Originally by:DrachenlordALSO... it's a Game that CCP can decide whether or not certain players should be allowed to play AT WILL, and at any time...

Being all powerful does not mean that what they did is fair.

Originally by:Drachenlordnow having said that, I would say to err on the side of caution is better than allowing potential exploiters to have the benefit of the doubt...

Well and this is exactly what i meant. The devlog states that without further investigation the chars simply got banned just because they had a director role. Thus there was no investigation if they really knew and/or where involved.

Originally by:DrachenlordPlain and simple... when it comes to EULA enforcement, Eve is not a democracy... they can and will enforce the EULA how they see fit... and for anyone who would want to argue otherwise... being that they're the developer and publisher of the game, they can change the EULA when they need to as situations such as this would arise.

Same remark here: being all powerful does not mean that what they did is fair. Punishing the guilty ok. But if you ban people without any further investigation to make sure they were indeed involved you are morally wrong.

Originally by:DrachenlordFor this situation however there were already measures in place and they used it...

If innocent people got banned... I would have to say they need to be more careful who they give POS management roles to... and best of luck getting their accounts unbanned if they in fact had no knowledge of the exploit.

How tight security may be its impossible to keep people out who want to be bad. No matter how hard security organizations of the USA, Russia work, there always be spies. And no matter how many cops you employ: there always be crimes. And even if people are ok for a long time they can turn bad one day. Ask bob or better Kenzoku... From what i have seen on their now open forums they did there very best to avoid bad people. If people really wanna do bad stuff you cannot avoid it.

Originally by:DrachenlordAt the end of the day, if you disapprove this strongly of how they handled a pretty serious exploit... run for CSM this year, or stop playing are about your only options.

Maybe one day i will. But for now i rather spend my time on my corp and alliance. And with this discussion i am already doing something about it. Stopping is no option. If you run away every single time you do not like something you end up having no place to run too.

Posted - 2009.02.11 14:52:00 -
[169]
Really good overview of the entire bug, however i cant help wondering about your reference point for comparecent of the actual effect of this bug on the EVE echonomy.

I know you properly had your cheef echonomical guy write up some of the blog - bud my fear is that this numbers show what you want them to show, which is that this bug did not have any real impact on the EVE echonomy.

Now let me explain my self...There are 2 kinds of trade going on in Jita, 1 the kind of trade that relates to normal item exchange between players buying and purchase of items and modules to create new modules and items, 2 the kind of trade that relates to acutal raw materials - now CCP does there best to ensure that not to much raw material is introduced into the game which is good.

However in your blog you compare the bug to all trade going on in Jita where as to show the bugs actual impact you should only compare it to the actual introduction of raw materials.I know its extremely hard to see how this will work in parcis how you would go around measuring this un actuality, cause what we want to know is when a item is sold for the first time, and then we dont really care about the rest of the items life cycle...

What is interesting to know here is not how much the 6-12 trillin is compared to average trade in jita cause any and all items in Jita are traded more then once to make the comparesen transparrent it would be nice to know how much the 6-12 trillian is compared to the minerals that are bieng mined, the moon ore and reactions that are produced, the construction components that are bieng sold.

Im willing to bed that the 98 Ferrogel reactions this pos monkeys wore running corrosponded to much more to the total of the Univers supply of high end reactions.I remember that Deklein have something like 10 prometium moons which corrosponds to 5 full Ferrogel reactinos lets try and use this as our point of reference.Now EVE have about 28 NPC regions and 35 regions that are owned by verious alliances. Now lets say that every one of the 64 regions (yes i used EVE-Map and started counting) can produce 5 full ferrogel reactions each.One full ferrogel reaction uses 2 Complex Reactors.

So with 64 Region's producing 5 reactions each (2 Complex reactors) we should have a total of 640 Complex reactors running the ferrogel reaction.

So compared to this numbers the people who wore using this bug to make money actually wore responsible for 15% of all the ferrogel produced in the EVE universe.

Now im sure that you CCP track how much isk is bieng introduced into the game threw missions (loot, LP and isk), from mining, from ratting, research agents (omg remove them already) and moon materials.

So now the question is how much did this bug actually influence the EVE echonomy ...cause one thing is for sure it is not the 0.7% of one days trading in Jita...it is much much more....some where between 1-5% of the EVE echonomy durring the period where this bug was bieng utelized to the fullest....

So in conclusion, if you want to ease the EVE echonomy an echonomy thats out of control in respect to the high end reactions then the way to go is not to come up with a model where your findings "prove" that it didnt have any actual influence...

Quote:Others that were found to be involved in moving the exploited goods and laundering the ISK also received bans for their part.

So if a corp member is asked to help out to move some stuff cause he/she has a freighter and is asked to sell it on the market cause he/she has better trade skills then the owner of the goods: you can get banned also if the goods turned out to be illegal?!? And how is it possible to tell up front if a good is illegal or not? This is absolutely crazy! You better can stop helping your corp mates cause you can be potentially lose your account in doing so. Is CCP insane?

Posted - 2009.02.11 15:38:00 -
[172]
Good stuff. Exactly the kind of information that CCP should be comfortable about releasing.

Clear, detailed, and honest. Which usually gets the same response in reply.

I dont believe EvE/CCP is big enough to play the 'tough, deal with it' attitude.

If and when it does get there, be careful not to fall into the bad habit

I would be curious however for any informed speculation on how this effected politics/war/sov for the exploiting Corps/Alliances?Perhaps the stuff gained by the exploit, was laundered into real goodies that has now put some alliance/corp in a much stronger position?

No, they are sane, thus they banned all the hauler and market alts as well as the exploiters' main characters.

Just helping your corp mates is not going to get you banned. Participating in an RMT/exploit profit laundering operation will get you banned.

Then you are not reading it well, cause that nuance was not put in the posting. You only assume that they that cause you think thats how it should be. Its nothing more or less than whats written. Same like i pointed out in earlier posts about they just banned people with director rights. Not because CCP had evidence they were involved, no: they were banned just because they had the title. Having a title does not make you automatically involved, just like moving goods and selling for a corp mate does not either. Its clear CCP just banned big groups so they would be sure they had all involved and that innocent bystanders are a victim in the process does not seem to bother them. Very sad.

Posted - 2009.02.11 16:24:00 -
[176]
1) chart shows only top 10 exploiters vs volume of sales.. There are 134+ players involved...why are you not simply showing the entirety of this data?

2) In game market data windows are for the region only, not entire galaxy of EvE. If this was based simply on The Forge, it does not show the ripple effect of prices through out the galaxy...1000s of players buy from Jita and resell in other regions. So can you clarify this graph please?

3) 232 reactors running on 178 POS's, 7 corps total, with 1 corp running 81 of the bugged reactors and 134 accounts banned... 3 corps having the majority ..BUT... no mention of how many alliances where involved?

Quote:A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him. - George Orwell

Originally by:Sade OnyxI expect this issue has put a lot of strain on resources as so many people were involved in this blog. But can we now whip some dev's into giving us more blogs on Apochtypha? Its on the test server but no more blog's since QQ :(

Off topic, but I will have a ton of surprises for you coming within oh... soon :D

Originally by:Valeria CrossroadsIts clear CCP just banned big groups so they would be sure they had all involved and that innocent bystanders are a victim in the process does not seem to bother them. Very sad.

Do you need to add another layer to your tinfoil hat?

What sort of response could possibly satasfy you?

At one end you have CCP banning every innocent player who might have even chatted with the exploiters.

At the other you have CCP doing nothing more than fixing the bug, because they can't prove that the exploiters knew that what they were doing was wrong.

Do you expect CCP to violate their privacy and non-disclosure policies to list off all 134 account, each of the characters on those accounts, along with the email IP addresses, and other personally identifying information about those users. Publish complete transcripts of the banned users professions of innocense and/or ignorance, along with the counter-point evidence discovered by CCP detailing the transactions and action of those players both directly and indirectly relevant to the exploit.

Is there any hope that you might take CCP at its word when it says that it conducted a complete investigation, and that it follows its policies and proceedures for estabilishin reasonable evidence of foul play?

If you are unwilling to extend even a basic level of trust to CCP, why are you even playing this game.

If there was reasonable grounds to believe that a specific director was innocent, then it is doubtful that he would have been banned just because he held a title, even if that is how you choose to read the dev blog.

No need to insult me, if you disagree attack my points, not me as a person.

Quote:Users directly involved in the exploit were permanently banned. Direct involvement meant that the character had a director role in the corporation using the exploit

The above if from the dev log. It clearly states that for involvement a director role is enough. It does not say: thats it was ground for investigation and that innocent directors were not banned. Its nothing more or less: if you had a director role you were banned, period.

Quote:If there was reasonable grounds to believe that a specific director was innocent, then it is doubtful that he would have been banned just because he held a title, even if that is how you choose to read the dev log.

You assume that chars with director roles are not banned just because they had the title and you think it would be unfair if that would happen. But thats not what the dev log has stated. So its not me who is reading stuff thats not there its you.

Quote:At one end you have CCP banning every innocent player who might have even chatted with the exploiters.

At the other you have CCP doing nothing more than fixing the bug, because they can't prove that the exploiters knew that what they were doing was wrong.

What i want is that innocent people do not lose their account just because some bad guy used an exploit and you happen to be a director or even an hauler for them and losing their account cause of it. Guilty people need to be punished and not the innocent. And yeah it might not be easy to proof stuff, but punishing people you cannot proof they did something wrong is unjust. In rl people are free to go cause of not enough evidence or reasonable doubt. Why should it be any different here?

As for the duping, the people who were actually moon mining did know that what there where doing was wrong. They should at least have petitioned it and they did not.

Quote:Is there any hope that you might take CCP at its word when it says that it conducted a complete investigation, and that it follows its policies and proceedures for estabilishin reasonable evidence of foul play?

Lets reprint their words again:

Quote:Direct involvement meant that the character had a director role in the corporation using the exploit

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